By optimizing our portfolio, we ensure we meet our long-term commitments to stakeholders by delivering sustainable financial results and maintaining a strong and stable balance sheet.

We contributed to this over the past strategy cycle by divesting non-core businesses such as Transamerica’s reinsurance business, La Mondiale in France, Caja Badajoz Vida and Unnim in Spain, and our Canadian life insurance business. In total, we divested €3.4 billion of non-core activities.

At the same time, we entered into a new joint venture with Banco Santander in Portugal and La Banque Postale in France. We also acquired Mercer’s US defined contribution record-keeping business in the US.

We will focus on divesting our remaining non-core operations, and further grow distribution and scale in our core activities, including pension administration and asset management.

What steps are we taking to optimize our portfolio?

Balance risk profile

Create and manage a portfolio of relevant, profitable businesses

Maximize value of back books

What have we achieved so far?

In the US, we announced the acquisition of Mercer's US pension administration business. By acquiring this part of the business, the number of retirement plan participants served by Transamerica increases significantly (from 917,000 to around 5 million).

We also announced an expanded partnership between Edward Jones and Transamerica, which will help us to provide retirement plan solutions to companies throughout the US.

In the Netherlands, we completed a thorough business review and have decided to restructure our non-life business and to focus exclusively on the retail and the SME segments of the market.

To enhance our risk-return profile and improve capital efficiency, we made a third longevity transaction in the Netherlands in July 2015. The hedge covers close to €6 billion of underlying reserves and provides protection for a period of 50 years against longevity improvements.

We decided to enlarge our presence in some of our Asian markets. We increased our stake in India from 26% to 49% – the maximum possible for foreign investors. And our joint venture GoBear, which is the first independent comparison site for insurance and financial products in Asia, expanded into Thailand and Malaysia.

Aegon bought Cofunds and BlackRock's UK defined contribution business. It also sold its UK annuity portfolio to Legal & General and Rothesay Life.

Aegon the Netherlands sold its commercial line non-life business, including its proxy and co-insurance run-off portfolios, to Allianz Benelux.

Banco Santander and Aegon agreed to extend the scope of their bancassurance partnership in Spain and Portugal.

Aegon was the first company to receive approval from the Dutch Central Bank (DNB) to launch a General Pension Fund in the Netherlands. 'Stap' has already won three mandates totaling €2 billion in assets.

Aegon Life, Aegon's joint venture in India, restructured its activities to focus on the digital direct-to-consumer market, where it has a leading position.

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